How fermentation is making Hong Kong restaurant dishes more flavourful and healthy
How chefs are using fermented foods – long associated with good digestion – to add a new dimension to Western, Chinese and vegetarian menus
Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong executive chef Robin Zavou pushes a trolley filled with glass jars out into the Mandarin Grill + Bar. He’s excited about his culinary experiments, which are in various states of fermentation and producing a variety of tastes that range from the ultra salty to delicately sweet.
The experiments started more than a year-and-a-half ago when his predecessor, Uwe Opocensky, was keen to learn more about fermentation for health reasons and brought the techniques into the hotel’s kitchens to see if more could be done.
Fermentation has long been used in foods and drinks from beer and wine to yogurt, bread, cheese, sauerkraut, kimchi, soy sauce, kombucha (Chinese sweetened black or green tea) and kefir (a Caucasian milk drink).
For many, consuming such foods regularly helps tremendously with digestion, as they contain probiotics that help the body break down what we eat and drink. In addition to being good for you, they can also add intense flavours to cooking, which is why Zavou is so enthusiastic about his experiments, which are carefully labelled in glass jars, and which he lets us sample.
Some of the results have made their way onto the Mandarin menu. For example, a Japanese Miyazaki beef tenderloin dish is garnished with fermented mustard that has a complex, rustic and natural taste.